From the 1870s attempts were made to exploit the natural woodlands of Kyleakin and Sleat on a more commercial basis. Birch was sold to a Glasgow timber merchant, probably for the manufacture of bobbins in the Paisley cotton mills.
But even then the difficulties of extracting and transporting the timber scarcely made it worth the cost, and by 1919 one report concluded that much of the local birch woods were ‘of no commercial value whatever and it would be useless wasting money, time and labour trying to improve it’.
These last attempts were dropped, and the remnants of the ancient woodlands have survived to this day.
- Find out more about what’s being done to regenerate these natural remnants of woodland on the Wildlife at Kinloch page.
